r, conduct, faults, and good qualities of
the culprit, and with these indications the magistrate is able to essay
the correction, not of the particular offence which has brought the
child within his jurisdiction, but his general organic defects. The
punishments do not include imprisonment, and are drawn from practical
experience and common-sense, not from any article of the penal code.

I was present at the hearing of a case against a lad, who was accused of
having travelled on a subway without paying. He was sentenced to copy
out the by-laws twenty times, to learn them by heart and repeat them a
month later at the same court. In the case of more serious offences,
children may be sent to some public or private reformatory, according to
the circumstances of the parents. However, none of these punishments are
infamous, and parents themselves, when unable to control their children,
have recourse to the juvenile court.

It is supplemented in a very efficacious manner by the probation system,
the organisation of a number of men and women who undertake the
supervision of children when the court decides that they require it.
These protectors use every means at their disposal to prevent their
charges falling into bad ways and assist them in every possible way to
correct their defects.

This system has proved to be so efficacious, and at the same time so
devoid of any drawbacks, that its unconditional adoption by all the
States of Europe and America would be of great social advantage.

INSTITUTIONS FOR FEMALE OFFENDERS

The weighty reasons which call for separate courts and reformatories for
juvenile offenders are equally valid in the case of female law-breakers,
for whom special tribunals and legislation should be provided.

The percentage of criminality among women is considerably lower than
that of men, and in nearly all cases offenders belong to the category of
criminaloids.

My father's work _The Female Offender_ demonstrates that prostitution is
the true equivalent of criminality. When we except this class of
unfortunates, there remain only hysterical and occasional offenders,
guilty generally of petty larceny (particularly of a domestic nature) or
of harbouring criminals and acting as more or less passive accomplices;
and criminals from passion, who commit infanticide or kill faithless
husbands and lovers. In all these cases, imprisonment should not be
resorted to; in fact, the greater number might be dealt with